Electric-Magneto-Optical Kerr Effect in a Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Perovskite

Hybrid organic-inorganic compounds attract a lot of interest for their flexible structures and multifunctional properties. For example, they can have coexisting magnetism and ferroelectricity whose possible coupling gives rise to magnetoelectricity. Here using first-principles computations, we show that, in a perovskite metal-organic framework (MOF), the magnetic and electric orders are further coupled to optical excitations, leading to an Electric tuning of the Magneto-Optical Kerr effect (EMOKE). Moreover, the Kerr angle can be switched by reversal of both ferroelectric and magnetic polarization only. The interplay between the Kerr angle and the organic-inorganic components of MOFs offers surprising unprecedented tools for engineering MOKE in complex compounds. Note that this work may be relevant to acentric magnetic systems in general, e.g., multiferroics.